SAS

There is a palpable sense of excitement surrounding the GB Rowing Team’s Caversham training base at the start of the summer racing period. The season began well with six medal wins, including a gold for the men’s quadruple sculls and a silver for the women’s eight at the first international regatta of the rowing calendar, the World Rowing Cup I in Belgrade, Serbia.

A series of three regattas taking place early in the summer each year, the three World Rowing Cups form an important part of the team’s preparation ahead of the European and World Rowing Championships later in the year. Data is an integral part of the sport and as the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, SAS provides a vital tool in helping British Rowing maintain success on a long-term basis and identify the rowers who will take to the water at future Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Speaking at the World Rowing Cup squad announcement about the importance of data analytics in preparing for elite regattas, Rebecca Girling, who rowed in seat two of the silver medal-winning women’s eight squad, said: “The most important aspect of data analysis, particularly when preparing for the World Rowing Cup, is to be able to track performance over the course of an individual race, targeting extremely specific areas of improvement. In rowing, the difference between a gold and a silver medal can be a matter of milliseconds, but data analysis can help us to pinpoint exactly what we need to do to reduce our time and ultimately find those marginal gains that can make the difference.”

As the first international regattas of the summer, the World Rowing Cup races will, in some instances, be the first elite events that some crews have raced at together, and analysis of data for new crews can help to provide a second, yet equally important, benefit to athletes – a mental edge at the start line. Speaking about the confidence boost that the data can provide ahead of an international regatta, the Hampshire native continued: “Fundamentally, if our practice data tells us that we can get from A to B at a certain speed, all we have to do is replicate that during the race. The confidence comes from the knowledge that we are not trying to achieve a miracle, but to simply perform as we do every day at Caversham. It doesn’t matter that the person in the next boat might be a world record holder because through the data I know what we are capable of and having that confidence at the World Rowing Cup is a huge benefit.”

Elaborating on the impact of data analytics on preparation for the World Rowing Cups, British Rowing’s Biomechanist and Performance Analyst, Jack Mercer said: “We collect an enormous amount of data every day, in every session, and the important thing to be able to do is turn the raw numbers into useful information that both athletes and coaches can interpret easily. Ultimately, our goal is to turn as much information as we can into performance gains and success at international competitions. SAS’ manipulation, processing and interpretation abilities are a massive help in maintaining that into the future.”

Of the athletes who competed in Belgrade and will make the trip to Linz Ottensheim, Austria and Lucerne, Switzerland later in the summer, as part of the World Rowing Cup squad, some will only have been with the team for as little as six weeks. For the Sports Science team, it is important to understand these athletes’ key strengths and weaknesses as quickly as possible so that the best crews can be put forward to race.

Mercer continued: “Data analytics helps us to identify the areas that newer athletes might be able to improve upon more quickly, bringing them up to speed with the rest of the squad in a much shorter space of time. In years past, it would have taken a lot longer to fully assess new athletes, but with today’s technology we are now able to do this much more quickly, ensuring that the best athletes are racing at the World Rowing Cups, and then again at the European and World Championships.”

In a 90-second film released by SAS, the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, coaches and athletes highlighted the crucial role data analytics plays in a successful international team. The film was shot during an overseas training camp with the women’s squad in Seville, Spain.

Data scientists and consultants from SAS, the leaders in analytics, have been working with British Rowing to analyse data from training and biomechanics to weather and diet, in a bid to unlock marginal gains that can help make the boats go faster.

SAS, the global leader in analytics, is delighted to announce that it has extended its partnership with British Rowing as Official Analytics Partner for a further three years, until December 2020.

The extension of the partnership comes off the back of four successful years working together, during which SAS has helped British Rowing gain a better understanding of the intelligence and value that data management and analysis can bring to a data rich environment.

Over the next three years, SAS will build on this work and help transform data analytics across the organisation. This will support British Rowing’s ambition to become a more data-driven and insight-led organisation.

In addition to a substantial financial commitment, SAS will provide its market leading analytics software, consultancy services and training to support key projects covering British Rowing’s world class high performance programme, as well as the wider rowing community.

Building on the phenomenal success of British Rowing’s talent identification programmes, World Class Start, Para-rowing Talent ID and the High Performance Programme in Clubs, SAS will provide data analytics and reporting to help identify and develop the future stars of rowing looking ahead to Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028.

In order to better serve and grow British Rowing’s membership, SAS will provide its world-leading software and expertise to develop a suite of real-time membership dashboards. These will be used by British Rowing’s senior management team to make insight-based decisions to help improve and promote the membership offer and provide insights into British Rowing’s education and training provision for clubs, coaches and rowers.

In addition, SAS will support the roll-out of rowing’s new domestic Competition Framework, that will help to create fairer, closer and more exciting racing through a ranking points system. SAS’ expertise in data analytics will be used to review in excess of 65,000 competition records captured during the pilot phase to help shape the points calculations that underpin the new Competition Framework.

Working with SAS across these projects will provide British Rowing with improved data architecture and enhanced analytics expertise to support its ambitions to remain as one of the world’s leading rowing nations and further support its growing membership.

Commenting on the extension to the partnership, Andy Parkinson, CEO of British Rowing, said: “We are delighted to have extended our excellent partnership with SAS and I would like to thank them for their continued support of British Rowing. Over the past four years, SAS has really helped us lay the foundations of our data analytics capabilities and we are excited to be taking the partnership to a new level. By working with the global leader in data analytics, we are confident that we can achieve our ambitions to be a data-driven, insight-led organisation adding value to our sport on and off the field of play.”

Charles Senabulya, VP & Country Manager, SAS UK & Ireland, said: “It’s been really exciting working with British Rowing and being able to share in some of the outstanding successes they’ve had in competition. It’s also a great way to showcase the power of analytics and how it can help any organisation get an edge over the competition. We look forward to working with British Rowing on a number of new initiatives, not only to help develop future champions but also to support them in being able to make better, data-driven decisions as a governing body.”

Paul Thompson, GB Rowing Team’s Chief Coach for Women, has highlighted the crucial role of data analytics to coaching a successful international team, while on an overseas training camp with British Rowing’s women’s squad in Seville, Spain.

As part of the coaching set-up for one of Great Britain’s most successful Olympic disciplines, the Australian is quick to set out the team’s ambitious goals: “We [British Rowing] have won five medals in Olympic class boats, and we want more.”

The acclaimed coach knows how to get his squad to exceed expectations, having helped lead British Rowing to a number of historic Olympic medals, including its first for the women’s eight at Rio 2016. “You’ve got to be evidence based to use your judgement. In a coaching sense it’s the art and the science, and that’s where the two interact,” he explained.

“We measure the athletes to see what their morning monitoring is like. That is to say: how they wake up in the morning, their readiness to train, their readiness to compete, what they do on the rowing machine, what they do on the water, and how compatible they are.

“We can measure lots of things. The skill for me is finding out what the most important thing for that athlete to focus on is and what we can actually change.”

To support British Rowing to do this more effectively, data scientists and consultants from SAS, the global leaders in analytics and Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, have been working with the team to explore the data from training and biomechanics to weather and diet, in a bid to unlock marginal gains that could help make the boats go faster.

Zoe Lee, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, was part of the women’s eight that won Britain’s historic silver medal at Rio 2016. The 32-year-old, who is returning to the squad from injury, described a typical day at a training camp: “I’ll get up and go to our morning monitoring where our physiologists will record our data on how we’re feeling, how we’ve slept, how we’ve recovered from the previous day’s training. Then off to breakfast before a first session, which today was on the water, probably do some weights after a second breakfast, then we have lunch, a little bit of relaxation before a final session in the evening.

Lee, who has a PhD in geography, continued: “Being a bit of a scientist in my life away from rowing, I love data. And I love being able to use any data that I’ve recorded to track the trends in my improvement and how a crew has evolved over time. It’s been really important to me coming back from rehab and injury last season to be able to go, I’ve improved this much in the last month and that puts me on track relative to my best in 2015/2016 seasons by this much.”

Peter Pugh-Jones, Head of Technology at SAS UK & Ireland, said: “At SAS, we have the capability to use innovative software and services, including the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), to transform a world of data into intelligence that empowers and inspires our customers.

“With British Rowing, we use powerful analytics that puts it at the leading edge when it comes to extracting insights from a variety of data within the sport, helping the squad to maintain its reputation as the dominant force in the world of rowing.”

While Sir Bradley Wiggins was the most decorated British Olympian to grace the 2017 British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC), Olympic gold medal-winning Skeleton racer Amy Williams was being put through her paces by a team from British Rowing.

Participating on behalf of SAS, the Official Data Analytics Partner of British Rowing, the Team GB Ambassador for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics commented that she wonders how her own career might have been improved with the backing of data analytics.

“My era wasn’t using data analysis as it’s available to athletes today. My analysis was simply a notebook where I’d write down the humidity, the ice temperature and the air, runners I’d put on the skeleton, and the time of day. Those were my stats. That was it. Then, when I was back at the same track, I’d see what the conditions were and how I’d performed.

“Whereas now, if I had a company like SAS involved, and knowing what they could do for me in terms of data analysis, as an athlete, that would give me a huge boost of confidence.

Williams, who won her gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, added: “Overall, the way that sport has shifted and changed to help an athlete perform is incredible. From talent identification to helping them over a number of years to improve. I wonder how much better I could have performed. It’s great to have companies now able to help athletes win more medals.”

THE BENEFITS OF DATA ANALYTICS TO BRITISH ROWING
Introducing Williams to indoor rowing were Steve Gunn, manager of British Rowing’s talent ID programme World Class Start; Tom Barras, who recently picked up a bronze medal in the single scull at the World Rowing Championships; and Emily Carmichael, a 25-year-old sculler, who switched to rowing from equestrianism in 2014. Emily hopes to follow in the footsteps of her father, Malcolm, who won bronze for Great Britain in the men’s pair at the 1980 Olympic Games.

Carmichael echoed Williams’ sentiment, commenting: “I love data, and having all sorts of information at my fingertips. Winning gold medals requires fine details. The margins are so small, less than one per cent, so having SAS’s support is invaluable. We know that no stone is unturned, so when we arrive at competitions we know we’re as strong as we possibly can be.”

Gunn, who coached the Searle brothers to a gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, said: “We had data in those days, but we used to work on it with paper and pencils and rulers. Now, doing that on computers, we can collect more data and do more with it and it’s getting more and more useful.”

Commenting on how data is part of his role in talent identification, the coach added: “We test people when we first meet them, then we look back at data collected from other people on the World Class Start programme – British Rowing’s talent identification programme, used to identify, recruit and develop individuals with no prior experience, to become Olympic rowers – and the 20,000 plus that we’ve tested over the last 15 years. This enables us to know whether to take them on or not, and whether they have a realistic chance of reaching the Olympics.

“Data is used in recruitment, development, and how we test whether people are progressing, which is important. Ultimately, we’re aiming at getting people to the Olympics, but that can take anything from four-and-a-half years, which is the quickest we’ve done it, but more likely six to 10 years. We can’t wait that long to see how someone is doing, so data gives us an idea of an athlete’s progress along a pathway.”

This is an area of particular interest to, 23-year-old Tom Barras, who said: “Having access to it [data analytics] at any one time is what’s so good. It’s important to the whole support team. You can pop down and speak to the physiologists about how you’re going to adjust what training you’re doing, or your heart rate, how you’re feeling, even something like urine analysis (so how hydrated you are), to looking at lactate levels and comparing that to how it has been before and whether you’re working hard enough. You then compare that with others in the team, so you can see where you need to try to be.”

SIR BRADLEY WIGGINS AT BRIC
With two high-profile non-rowing ex-Olympian Champions attending the British Rowing Indoor Championships, Steve Gunn responded to whether it would be possible for a world-class athlete in another discipline to make a successful switch to rowing.

“The rules still apply. We know what an Olympic rower looks like and that won’t change. We regularly, probably every second Olympics, measure all rowers, from all countries, so we know the constraints in which we’re living in. So, even coming from another sport, they still have to fit that model…and that’s before they’ve started training.

“Of course, what they will bring with them is the psychology of being able to perform, and that’s something we don’t always have when starting from scratch.”

SAS, the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, examines the benefits of indoor rowing for athletes of all abilities and ages ahead of the British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC), taking place on Saturday, 9 December at the Lee Valley VeloPark.

With a multitude of external and climatic variables affecting each performance, the complexities of rowing on water make indoor rowing a pivotal part of the British Rowing training schedule.

Holly Norton, who has World Championship medals in the Women’s Four and Women’s Pair, noted: “It is extremely useful because the environment is controlled, so the splits you are getting on the erg are consistent and you don’t have to think about outside factors such as wind or water temperature, so it really helps you assess your fitness. You can also do a lot of technical things on the erg and then take that to the water. The erg data will give you an idea of what sorts of performances you are likely to do on the water, so it’s very useful throughout the winter and is what we are focussing on now.”

Data collected from British Rowing training sessions enables athletes and coaches to assess lots of factors and make informed decisions about how to positively work towards their performance targets at events, including the European Championships in Glasgow next year and, most importantly, the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in 2020.

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

This scientific approach is acknowledged to increase the confidence of British Rowing athletes, and Paralympian Grace Clough highlighted some of the physiological benefits of indoor rowing: “Ergos are great because they are not weight bearing. It’s a powerful tool and you are using a lot of power and exertion, but it’s not putting pressure on your joints like some activities do.”

The benefits of indoor rowing are not limited to the elite rowers. Indoor rowing is accessible to all, with indoor rowing machines common in gyms throughout the country.

Double World Rowing Champion Mat Tarrant spoke about the transferable skills from the ergo to competitive action: “Indoor rowing gives you the basics of fitness and strength that you need for all sport, so you can focus on certain muscle groups and work on your entire aerobic system.”

He also noted the role that data can play in the daily training regime: “Whenever I finish the erg I always look at the overall distance and interval split times. So, say you do 20 minutes, you can see how quick you were for every five-minute segment or you can just see how quick you are for the overall time, and compare this to previous results. You can use this as inspiration to push yourself.”

For the ultra-competitive, events such as BRIC, which release competitor split times, can provide a data benchmark for budding rowers to aspire to within the comfort of their gym. The next step, the transition onto the water, may not be so simple, but as pointed out by Norton, “being on the water is more exciting, so definitely worth the challenge.”

British rowing athletes at the World Rowing Championships in Sarasota, Florida, USA, have revealed the importance of data analytics in working towards the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Will Satch and Kat Copeland, gold medal winning Olympians, and James Fox, current Paralympic and World Champion, took time out after their week in the Florida sunshine at the stunning Nathan Benderson Park to share how working with British Rowing’s official data analytics partner, SAS, can contribute to making their boats go faster, as well as their focus and plans for the Olympiad.

James Fox, part of the GB Rowing Team’s Para-rowing PR3 Mixed Coxed Four, speaking with SAS following gold at the 2017 World Rowing Championships

James Fox: “Winning a gold medal today really gets me fired up for the future, putting in the hard work now and making it easy in three years’ time. The focus for me now is on Tokyo. It was great to win gold at Sarasota this year and we want to win it again next year, but after that we’re in the qualifying year and then we’re suddenly in an Paralympic year, where everything starts to get really real.

“We use data every day, we use it immediately in the boat, we have a speed coach who tells us how fast we’re going and how many strokes we’re taking per minute and that is really crucial to us, especially when racing and so that we know we’re on the red line all the way. The weather has been really different to home, but we know from data that warm water makes the boat go faster; even a little fact like that is really important to know and gives us a confidence boost. It’s important to be able to compare the data from past performance, especially in the lead up to Tokyo 2020, so that when we get there, we know the level our performance is at and how we have progressed throughout the four years.”

Will Satch, part of the GB Rowing Team’s Men’s Four, speaking with SAS following bronze at the 2017 World Rowing Championships

Will Satch: “Over the four years that we’ve had SAS as our Analytics Partner everything gets analysed. We’re tested about six times a year on the water and six on the Ergo machine, but we’re tested on something almost every day of the year now and it’s put into the system. We see the results of biomechanical analysis, water analysis, but the list really goes on and on. From the moment you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep, everything is monitored. We’re very lucky to have a partner with SAS’s data analytics capabilities working with us.”

Kat Copeland, part of the GB Rowing Team’s Women’s Lightweight Double, speaking with SAS following competing at the 2017 World Rowing Championships

Kat Copeland: “It’s a benefit being able to see the data after performing. We can get a better understanding of how to make the most effective stroke on the water and how to make the boat go that bit faster, by looking at the forces and angles working on the boat which has been extremely useful in day-to-day training.

“It’s really great having the data collected, and to then be able to use it and actually interact with it. We get a lot of body measurements, even measuring skin folds, but that data can be really useful in improving performance. In my crew last year we had a bit of a problem with over training and not recovering for long enough and we were able to use skin fold and body fat measurements from the past five years to see that our measurements were too low and too lean. Going in to this year we’ve been able to really eradicate that problem. I really feel that with SAS we have the people around us to help us maximise the use of data and help direct us in our training to improve our overall performance.

“Our team is really focused on Tokyo and the next Olympiad, that’s what we’re all working towards. I’m treating next year as another building block towards Tokyo as we’ve only really got one more year until Qualifications.”

Marginal Gains

Since March 2014, SAS has been working with British Rowing helping to develop their data capabilities to ultimately identify opportunities to make the marginal gains that help makes the boats go faster.

Data captured by British Rowing, for analysis by SAS, comes from an enormous variety of sources, measuring all aspects of training, from biomechanics and physiology to weather and diet.

Click here for more information about SAS, Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing.

Royal Albert Dock Trust, UK – June 28th

Although often thought of as a “pulling” sport, in fact, rowing is much more dependent on the “pushing” forces of a rower’s legs. To demonstrate this, SAS, the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, invited double Olympic champion Helen Glover to row in an indoor practice tank rigged with sensors on the oars and footplates.

As Glover was rowing, SAS collected and analysed data to visually illustrate each stroke and show there is always an opportunity to improve performance, even at the elite level, by highlighting inconsistencies, strengths and weaknesses.

Data collection and analytics are now being adopted across many different organisations, and sport has seen a considerable increase in use of data. It is no longer enough to simply record the speed or angle of a boat in the water, but a huge array of different data types are available to SAS to help allow British Rowing athletes to perform at their best and give them the best chance to succeed at international level.

For rowers benefitting from enhanced data analysis, the development has been vital in ensuring peak performance is achieved. Speaking at an event hosted by SAS, Helen Glover said: “For me, data analytics was fundamental to my build-up to Rio. Having that information about myself, and knowing that I was going to be my best self on the start line was crucial.”

As a previous Henley Royal Regatta winner and double Olympic Champion, Glover understands the impact that data analytics can provide as rowers up and down the country prepare for this year’s regatta. Every athlete understands their performance and how they can improve upon it, whether they are an Olympian getting ready for Tokyo 2020, or club rowers taking part at Henley but Glover identified the reassurance that data analytics can provide when training to be the best in the world, giving her the “edge” over her competitors. “To have hard, factual data coming back and backing up what you’re doing in training is really important for me. Your body is your machine when you’re competing, so anything that you can find out about your body, your mechanics, your physiology, your psychology, is going to make you that better athlete on the start line.”

Speaking about the types of data collected, Steve Ludlow, Principal Technology Consultant at SAS UK & Ireland, said: “British Rowing collects all sorts of data that we can help analyse. We can look at data from the sensors on the boat, the biomechanical data including the angles and forces working on the boat, temperature data, and even medical data.” To put the sheer amount of data collected into perspective, Ludlow described how a new piece of data is collected “every two one thousandths of a second, so if you are doing a session of 24km, then you are collecting gigabytes worth of data [in a single session].”

Ahead of this Sunday’s Cancer Research UK Boat Races, two of British Rowing’s medallists from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Zoë Lee and Constantine Louloudis, have revealed what it takes to be successful in one of the oldest annual sporting events in the world.

Speaking at an event hosted by SAS in November, the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing, Zoë Lee – the former Oxford Blue and stroke of the silver-medal winning Women’s Eight at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games – commented on the importance of data in such a big boat.

“Using data to help make the boat go faster is especially key in bigger boats. If you can understand the physics of how the boat moves and your own personal physiology you can unlock a lot of wasted potential and cut out the extraneous wasted energy,” said Lee.

“In looking into personal data, how hard we are having to work to produce those speeds as an individual and as a boat are incredibly important. An eight needs to work well as a team and be more than the sum of its parts.”

Constantine Louloudis, a member of the gold medal-winning Men’s Four at last summer’s Olympic Games, holds a particularly strong affection for the Boat Race as a four-time winner in the Dark Blue colours of Oxford University. He knows exactly what is required to be victorious.

Speaking at a SAS event in 2016, Louloudis said, “I think the one-on-one nature of the rivalry is pretty important but when you are first in the Boat Race, and if you aren’t quite used to that rivalry, that added to the profile of the event is a big thing. The reality is that in a sport like rowing, getting an event that so many people are in to, and gets such exposure, makes a big difference and is really exhilarating”.

‘‘The Boat Race is about three times longer than the 2000m Olympic course and that means the emphasis is much more on aerobic development, being able to go the distance and last for a race that takes between 17 and 20 minutes; whereas at the Olympics or World Championships it will all be over after about six minutes if you are in an eight-man boat.”

Moe Sbihi, British indoor rowing record holder and Olympic gold medal-winner, is ready to set the pace at the British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC) today.

Indoor rowing has a practical element to the training of Britain’s elite squad, as data collected to gauge an athlete’s performance and progress is more reliable, as Mark Homer, Senior Sport Scientist for British Rowing explained: “The rowing machine is important to us as our fixed test bed to compare athletes’ scores. Out on the water, because of the elements, speeds can be influenced by the environment”.

At a recent event organised by SAS, the official analytics partner of British Rowing, Sbihi, who broke Sir Matthew Pinsent’s 11-year British indoor 2km record in 2015, threw down the gauntlet to other rowers: “It’s a really exciting event to be part of. Hopefully what I did last year will inspire people to give it a go”.

SAS, the leader in analytics, has been working with the athletes and coaches to help understand British Rowing’s data analytics requirements. The aim of the work is to streamline data collection, storage and analysis as well as track individual’s training programmes, forecast problems and solutions and ultimately improve performance.

Hugo D’Ulisse, Head of Analytical Platform at SAS UK & Ireland, said: “Ergo training generates a significant quantity of data from which you can get insights into an individual’s performance over time. As we look ahead to the next Olympiad we will, in addition to this, be looking at everything from medical data to weather data and of course performance data as we look to achieve the ultimate goal of making the boat go faster.”

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